Sunday Lunch

DP and I often have a Sunday lunch at, erm, lunchtime, then in the evening we have a pudding, often a fruit crumble with custard or evaporated milk. I always used to make custard using dried powder and UHT milk. Then one day, having spotted value custard, I worked out the costs, and it is actually cheaper to buy it ready made. That was a bit of a surprise for someone who makes everything she can to keep costs down. So sometimes I use a tin of custard

DP’s favourites are apple or rhubarb or plum – hence our little apple and plum trees and our forest of rhubarb 🙂

The crumble mix is super easy to make, just a bit of light stirring.

 

I use this pyrex dish to make them in – I now have three of them, all from charity shops, and they are THE most useful things for 2 people. I use them for these crumbles, cauli and pasta cheese, savoury crumbles, pasta bakes etc etc. I make a 4 portion recipe and put half in each of two dishes and have the 2nd half the next day

This also helps with portion control as left to his own devices, DP would eat the leftovers and leave me with a little bit in the corner of the dish that isn’t even half a portion. He does this with the crumbles. Theoretically, they are 4 portions, but I serve up half, then the rest gets scoffed by DP on his way  through the kitchen. All except the little bit in the corner. Makes me wish we had a dog to feed it to!

This particular recipe is for meal plan three, so I will use the quantities for that. There are a great many variations for fruit crumble, I will suggest some at the bottom.

Other possible crumbles

a sprinkle of any or all of sesame seeds, pumpkin seeds, sunflower seeds.

Almost any fruit will make a tasty crumble. As well as those below, how about apricot, cherry or peach. I’ve never tried pineapple – would that work do you think?

Apple

toasted, chopped almonds or toasted chopped pecans and cinnamon/mixed spice in the topping (mix in a tsp cinnamon/mixed spice and smell the mix, repeat until you can smell the spice), serve with cinnamon ice cream

This post has an easy recipe to make ice cream. For cinnamon ice cream, make the base recipe, then stir in cinnamon. Try a little to start with, stir well and smell and taste the mix. Does it taste of as much cinnamon as you would like? If not, add more and repeat

lemon zest and toasted hazlenuts in the crumble, serve with lemon ice cream

plain topping or with hazelnuts, stir a couple of cloves into the apple, serve with custard or cream

toasted walnuts in topping. serve with dark muscovado ice cream

Pear

toasted walnuts and demerara sugar in topping, serve with coffee ice cream

Plum

toasted walnuts and muscovado sugar in topping, and use wholemeal flour

Rhubarb

finely chopped ginger/stem ginger in the fruit or the topping, serve with ginger ice cream

orange zest in the topping mix or the fruit

Gooseberry

add sugar or a good splash of undiluted elderflower cordial, serve with elderflower ice cream

Mixed Fruit

A super simple, and seasonal, crumble is to use mincemeat. Simply tip a 400g sized jar of mincemeat in the dish and top with crumble mix. Delicious!

Jack Monroe has posted a delicous sounding Christmas crumble using mixed fruit and peel and tinned mandarins, I will definitely be trying that one – sounds super yummy